Lee Sharkey: “The immediate trigger for ‘Berlioz’ was a brief account in Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia of Berlioz’s turning down the muse. I was struck by the parallels with my own experience of lucid memory—a house fire that devoured among other things seventeen years of my writing, my books, my child’s drawings, and my dog—and that earlier, involuntary loss became the emotional driver of the poem. The first line came to me, announcing its rhythm, and I knew from the start that ‘Berlioz’ would be written in syllabics.” (website)